by Hilary White
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LONDON, March 20, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Archbishop of Westminster, the head of the Catholic Church in the UK, is in a fight with one of the major Catholic hospitals in England that insists it is obliged to refer patients for abortions and contraception.
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A spokesman for the private Catholic hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, known locally as “John and Lizzie’s,” said, “Under General Medical Council code of practice, which all UK doctors must observe, the doctors must provide information to patients who request abortions or contraceptives. So they will be referred to external services for advice and counselling.”
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Complaints that National Health Service physicians leasing space from the hospital were referring for abortions had reached as far as the Vatican before the local Catholic hierarchy took action.
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At the request of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cormac Cardinal Murphy O’Connor launched a probe into the hospital’s activities after reports of abortion referrals reached the Vatican. In February, Lord Brennan a Catholic and Labour Party peer investigated and reported that the hospital was in violation of its own ethics code.
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Murphy O’Connor said in a letter to the hospital’s board that “differences of opinion” had arisen over implementation of the hospital’s ethics code. The Cardinal wrote that the hospital “cannot offer its patients, non-Catholic or Catholic, the whole range of services routinely accepted by many in modern secular society as being in a patient’s best interest.”
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The Cardinal wrote, “Differences of opinion have arisen about how the code’s provisions about consultation apply to referrals for direct abortion, for amniocentesis for purposes other than safe delivery, and for contraception, and to prescribing with contraceptive intent, particularly when what is prescribed is or may be abortifacient (e.g. by impeding implantation).”
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Lord Bridgeman, the hospital’s chairman said the Cardinal’s “views” would be taken into account. He said, “We accept Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s recommendation that we review our code of ethics.”
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“Our duty of care to patients remains paramount, and during this review process our doctors will continue to operate within the existing code of ethics,” he concluded.
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Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
London Catholic Hospital Referring for Abortions says Labour Peer
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06021308.html
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Read the text of Cardinal Murphy O’Connor’s letter:
https://www.rcdow.org.uk/cardinal/default.asp?library_ref=1&content_ref=642
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Write to support Cardinal Murphy O’Connor:
Austen Ivereigh
Director for Public Affairs
Telephone: 020 7798 9045
or 07905 224860
[email protected]